“I would say it probably lived up to what it was predicted,” Doll said.

Though he said he was not sure if the county received the predicted snowfall between six to eight inches or more, he said the wind had a big impact on the storm’s effect on the county.

“With the wind and the visibility and the snow drifts, that certainly was a huge factor of what a lot of the problems were,” Doll added.

Fort Morgan Public Information Officer / City Clerk John Brennan agreed that the snow and wind had a big impact on city staff managing the storm on Wednesday.

“It was an unusual storm, because temperatures stayed right around freezing. It was more like slush than anything else. The wind was blowing so hard, it piled up in drifts in places, but for the most part it wasn’t really piling up on the streets that much,” Brennan explained.

Brennan lauded the work of the public works and road management departments for working hard to manage the snow.

“Those guys are great at what they do. They know how to shift gears and take a different approach when they need to. They couldn’t use the big snow plow machine, so they just did things different,” Brennan said.

Roads were fairly cleared in downtown Fort Morgan on Thursday morning. Brennan thanked the departments across the city for working together and for preparing for the storm in the days ahead of time.

“Everybody was coordinating and getting things ready, staging the plow trucks and that kind of stuff,” Brennan explained. “We thought we were in pretty good shape and I think we handled the storm very well.”

“I think everybody in the city is proud of all of the departments. Light and power had a few minor outages but didn’t last long. They were right on them,” he added.

Brennan said the city facilities, aside from a two-hour delay at the Armory, all opened at normal hours on Thursday and would as well on Friday.

“Everything’s operating normally and will be tomorrow [Friday],” he added. “They’ll continue to try and clean up residential streets and continue snow removal, but not on as intense of a level.”

Brennan compiled reports from managers across the city. He said the Fort Morgan police department responded to about a dozen weather-related calls, which were generally routine.

Brennan’s report explained the limited electricity challenges the city had on Wednesday: “There were a couple of spotty outages caused by tree limbs falling through service lines leading to houses. The city’s power provider lost power twice, which affected the eastern side of the city to include Cargill, but these outages were also brief in nature.”

He also reported that the light and power department did not have any calls after 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Brennan said the cemetery personnel managed to complete a burial service in the middle of the storm midday on Wednesday.

For the street cleaning, Brennan reported that the streets department was “working the storm from the start.” After clearing roads of snow and fallen trees throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening, Brennan said they began again around 2 a.m. to continue clearing on Thursday.

Morgan County Rural Electric Association

The local electric cooperative saw some significant outages due to the blizzard, according to Director of External Affairs Dave Henderson.

The service interruptions began at around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, and peaked at about 2,000 electric services without power, Henderson said.

The outages were scattered around the cooperative’s service area, Henderson reported, and operations crews were dispatched immediately.

High winds and road conditions made restoration efforts challenging for the line crews working wide-open spaces and thousands of miles of electric line. However Henderson said the crews were up to the task.

As of 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Henderson said that service had been restored to all but 150 electric services, with crews continuing to work on those who remained without power.

The cooperative also serves the towns of Goodrich, Hoyt, Last Chance, Messex, Orchard, Prospect Valley, Roggen, Wiggins and Woodrow.

County Emergency Management

Director Roger Doll of Morgan County’s Office of Emergency Management said transportation was one of the bigger challenges during Wednesday’s snowstorm.

“We felt that this storm had been really spotlighted for quite a while, so we were kind of hopeful people would heed the warnings and stay off the roads, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

“We had a lot of people who were stranded out on the roads. That was probably our biggest issue over the course of the storm and especially last night.”

Doll explained some of the challenges for drivers on Wednesday afternoon and evening.

“We had everything from whiteout conditions where maybe they ended up sliding off the road or running into a ditch, or snow drifts where they got into the drift and they couldn’t go forward and backward. So they were stranded in the middle of the road.”

“We didn’t have too many accidents or crashes like that; it was more people either sliding off or getting stuck in the snow itself.”

For people who were picked up from stranded vehicles, Doll said they set up a temporary shelter at the Fort Morgan High School with the Red Cross. Doll said they decided to shut down that shelter down when it emptied out.

When they realized later they would still need a shelter, Doll thanked the Wiggins Fire Department and Brush Moose Lodge for providing community shelter space.

Tyler Purvis, Marketing Specialist with the City of Brush, said they heard the Brush Moose Lodge supported about 17 stranded motorists on Wednesday.

Doll said they believe they had made phone contact with almost all of the people stranded during the storm and managed to help those who asked to get a ride from their stranded vehicles.

Doll thanked the different county departments and outsides organizations that worked through the storm, including the Sheriff’s department, public works, road and bridge department, the Red Cross, the Colorado State Patrol, Fort Morgan Police Department and a statewide volunteer rescue organization called Colorado 4×4 Rescue & Recovery, among others.

“It really was a group effort,” he added.

Doll said they did not hear of any reported injuries from the storm on their side.

Brush, Wiggins and Hillrose

Purvis thanked Xcel Energy and the Morgan County Rural Electrification Association for helping residents get their electricity turned back on, within and around the City of Brush.

On early Thursday afternoon, Purvis said they were still working to clear some roads of snow and ice.

“We still have crews that are working snow and ice. Electricity, we did have some power out,” Purvis explained. “We had power go out at our well field, just like it did during the tornado last year, but that was up and running again.”

Purvis said they were happy to report that there was not too much ‘excitement’ with their storm management.

“Things are recovering quickly,” Purvis added.

Wiggins Public Works Supervisor Stan Dooley shared a similar sentiment. After a challenging night of snow and wind on Wednesday, Dooley said Thursday was much calmer.

“It was pretty touch and go last night. With the wind, it was really tough to keep the roads clear. Once we got them cleared off, it’s melted down to dry roads now,” Dooley explained on Thursday.

Though Dooley said he had heard of some continued challenges with large drifts on Thursday afternoon, Dooley said many of the main roads in the Wiggins area had cleared off of snow.

“We’ve kind of wrapped it up for the day,” Dooley added. “We’ve got all of our streets cleared up and that kind of thing. We’re in good shape.”

Hillrose Town Clerk Lynn Golemboski said on Thursday around the same time they had a couple more hours of snow clearing on Thursday afternoon. She said their crews started early Thursday morning and worked throughout the day.

She thanked Jim Zarbock, Dan Dewey and local crews for their hard work.

Golemboski said too that they saw the snow melt quickly as they started to clear it from the roads.

Golemboski also said Hillrose had a couple of hours of electricity outages on Wednesday before power was restored.

Though Brush, Wiggins and Hillrose city and town halls were closed on Thursday, they all said they expected them to be open on Friday.

Storm Communication

Many of the city, state and county departments attempted to send out information out through social media on Wednesday. Purvis said Facebook’s temporary issues on Wednesday caused issues to get information out.

“I was trying to upload some information to the community yesterday, just a basic overview of things to be mindful of, and it wasn’t until last night I was able to get that up and running,” Purvis explained.

“Not only us, but other cities around the state, that was one of the main channels for them to communicate with all of their citizens, and it was down. So they were relying more on some of the other social media accounts they had,” he added.

However, Purvis said he did not believe this temporary social media outage caused too much of an issue for Brush

“Fortunately the storm was not as bad as it could have been where there was nothing too dire that we had to get out quickly.”

Geoff Baumgartner was named the editor of The Fort Morgan Times in January 2019. He has served in various communications capacities in Morgan County for decades, including background in broadcast and media relations. In his free time, Geoff enjoys spending time with his family.